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Shon Law explains his lifescaping philosophy; a reader responds to our story about Spencer Beckstead and Arnold Palmer Hospital

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Justice for Spencer

I would like to commend Orlando Weekly for having the courage to write and publish this article (“Lawsuit accuses Arnold Palmer Hospital of boy’s death,” Feb. 26). I have a feeling the Sentinel may fear losing advertising revenue for publishing a negative article about Arnold Palmer Hospital. Reading through the comments written here is disturbing. In this day and age where we can learn so much through social media and other Internet outlets it is surprising to me that there are still people who do not realize that there are so many wrong things that happen in hospitals. There are still doctors whose extreme arrogance and narcissism cause them to ignore and sometimes even punish anyone who questions them. I am the parent of a very beautiful special-needs child. She was born with birth defects in her brain. At the age of 3, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer which required three brain surgeries, 6.5 weeks of high dose cranio-spinal radiation and six months of high-dose chemotherapy. She has many side effects on top of her birth defects. As her parent, I chose to become an advocate and educate myself about my daughter. I have come up against doctors who do their best to dismiss my observations and thoughts. I have dealt with doctors who listen and consider my observations and thoughts. Thank God for those doctors who listened. It saved her life more than once. It sounds to me like Spencer’s father was the same kind of parent.

Dr. Farrell refused to care for Spencer because his father reported his broken leg to the authorities! Nowhere in the report did it say he accused her. He only did what a responsible parent would do by reporting his child’s injury. This hospital did to Spencer’s father the same thing that Boston Children’s did to that little girl’s family. They accused him of Munchausen, which was investigated and found to be completely unfounded. They accused him of having his family live in terrible conditions, which was also unfounded. They trespassed him from being at the hospital with Spencer because he adjusted something on his own after his calls for assistance went unanswered. Hopefully now with the media attention that little girl’s outcome will be much better than Spencer’s. Hospitals are powerful, and parents have little recourse, especially with the medical facilities hiding behind their risk management departments.

Justice for Spencer!SMJ, via orlandoweekly.com

While I feel sorry for the kid, this story is nicely written to make some money off Arnold Palmer. There is more to this story. Never trust everything you read here ... the doctors in PICU are fantastic in Arnold Palmer. Everyone is greedy to make “fast” bucks at the expense of their own children. Very Sad.Peace, via orlandoweekly.com

The do-nothing farmer responds

Editor’s note: On March 5, we published a story called “The case of Longwood’s do-nothing farmer,” about Shon Law, a man who is facing more than $130,000 in fines for his method of growing food on his front lawn. Law has some concerns about the story, so we allowed him a little extra space to respond.

I’d like to talk with you about lifescaping. Perhaps the paradigm shift signified by the term is relevant. You could also just say growing life. If the lifescaping word is helpful, then that’s great. If not, then please mentally swap in “growing life” for “lifescaping,” as that’s all I really mean. It’s about growing life.
Of course I have some feelings about the article, the wacko cover photo, the focus on argumentation, quotes I think were out of context or inaccurate and the general portrayal. But it is not so important. Done is done.

What’s important is how are we going to regrow the world? How to avert the life-destruction that is continuing to happen worldwide? How can we grow local food interdependence and freedom from corporate dominance, conditioning, and control? How can we address rising CO2? Catastrophic climate change? Water, soil and air pollution? The mass extinction of animals? These are truths that exist beyond the sentences we make about them and the ways we bully each other for being different.

Is there a decentralized, democratized, very low cost way to collectively address this at a grass-roots level? Well, for step one, let’s turn our grass roots into tree roots.

We’re in the midst of irreversible planetary collapse. Orlando is already a collapsed ecosystem, food desert and extinction-scape, along with the rest of urban and suburban America. Make no mistake.

Natural farming in our yards, and even just the step of sheet-mulching the grass and seedballing monthly, is a great first step everyone can do for addressing these issues, on many levels, including the ground level. Of course do permaculture, biodynamic farming and so forth. That’s wonderful. This natural-farming method is just a very easy way so everyone can get to growing food forests right now. I believe we could teach a dog to do it. Really. As long as their slobber doesn’t get the balls too mushy.

Lifescaping vs. landscaping

Landscaping, as it’s practiced, is a massive scale process of continual deforestation, desertification, soil, air and water degradation and generalized destruction. It’s a great harm. And it turns those lands that we have control over – our own yards, parks and so forth – into mandated monocultures of extinction. And it is happening all the time at massive scale. If you’re not convinced, keep thinking about it and do some Googling. I’m trying to keep this in space.

Lifescaping – or growing life, especially food forests – is a process of continual re-forestation by growing a multitude of beneficial trees and plants; it’s a process of water preservation as it relies upon no irrigation, creates a ground cover that reduces soil evaporation, reduces soil erosion and filters runoff contaminants, thereby purifying our water. It uses only human energy, seeds and the natural abundance of sunshine, soil and rainfall. It is soundless, though it increases the abundance of bees and birds, which themselves make a multitude of joyful noise unto the world.

Growing life is as easy as not doing anything, and as difficult as letting life grow in peace and making friends with bugs. Growing life costs a fraction of landscaping, while simultaneously healing the world. In fact, it’s how we’re all here to begin with. The living harmonies that are the life systems of our world are the real wealth and value upon which we depend and through which we flourish. Growing these is growing prosperity for ourselves, generations to come and all beings great and small.